About me

About meAfter spending my childhood and teenage years in my native country of France I moved to the United Kingdom where I trained as a librarian at the University of Aberystwyth.
I got my first job as a school librarian in 1997 and I have been working in schools ever since, becoming a chartered librarian in 2000. I have always been a bibliophile but my interest in children’s literature grew as I was first introduced to many British classics during my librarianship course. I went on to write my master’s dissertation on reading development for the under-fives. As well as my work in school libraries, I have been involved in many projects on a voluntary basis:

In April 2010 I became a member of the National Executive committee of the Federation of Children’s Book Group, and in my time there (up to January 2016), I was in charge of booklists (and in this time also wrote two, see here for more information), website content and I organised the blog tour for the Red House Children’s Book Awards for three years. I also helped launch National Non-Fiction Day (now known as National Non-Fiction November).

I have also been involved in several Booktrust projects, taking part in selection panels for several of their bookgifting programmes, including chairing the selection panel for the 2013 School Libraries Pack, and in 2015 I was involved in Read for My School.

In September 2014, I began to study for an MA in Children’s Literature with the University of Roehampton and completed it, with an overall Merit, in March 2017. You can find out more about my dissertation below.

I review children’s books regularly on my children’s book blog Library Mice, which has been live since 2008, and I have also written reviews for Armadillo and Inis.

See my LinkedIn page for more information about relevant experience. Please do no hesitate to contact me if you would like a copy of my CV.

About my writing

Research

In autumn 2012, I wrote an article on developing reading for pleasure in secondary school for Academy Magazine.

I have always been interested in picturebooks which focus on books, reading and libraries. This led me to focus on this subject for my MA dissertation and whether positive images of reading in picturebooks help support a lifelong love of reading. Its title is Metareading in picturebooks: The potential of positive images of reading as a gateway to bibliophilia and you can read it here.

Other areas of research I am interested in includes children’s literature in translation (I wrote a post on the translation of Eric Veillé’s My Pictures after the Storm, which you can read here) and comics and graphic novels for teenagers, particularly autogrpahics.